If you have yet to listen to much loved sophomore release HOLIDAY, now is the time!

Pitchfork – 7.8

“Holiday would be a fine album at any moment, but it seems especially timely right now. Let’s take a quick inventory: The contours are stark and sleek, and it burns with a weirdly cold heat. The production is elaborate in a streamlined way, the melodies infectious. A sentimental digi-crooner is orbited by hums and blips, as if rendering your voice and music robotic gives you carte blanche to be messily human, even maudlin. Sound familiar? Suddenly, and just in time for the holidays, it’s as if indie pop fans immune to the charms of Kanye West have an 808’s and Heartbreak of their very own.

:What? Not only is Alaska in Winter more deserving of the title “maverick” than its eponymous state’s governor, the electronic project is also far more versed in foreign policy. Dance Party in the Balkans, the group’s 2007 debut, married robotic cadence with traditional Eastern European tones, fleshed out by dramatic strings and emotive vocals from frontman/Grand Poobah Brandon Bethancourt. This month’s follow-up, Holiday, takes a trip to Berlin — and in AIW’s Germany, life is a cabaret.”

All Music Guide:

“An artist who uses autotune, cheap-sounding rhythm machines, and multi-part song formats as profligately as {Brandon Bethancourt} does is just begging you to hate him. So it’s pleasantly frustrating, on the second {Alaska in Winter} album, to find it so utterly impossible to do so.”